«The Steppe of Nomadic Kirghiz-Kaisaks»: the Qazaq Steppe on Russian maps of the 18th – 19th centuries and the Early Modern cartography as a source for studying the geographical imagination of the Central and North Asia

Abstract

The article is a review of seven 18^th  and 19^th  century Russian maps, some of them are published for the first time, with some added notes on the nature of the early and mid – 19^th century maps. The main purpose of the text is to reveal the main features and ways to represent the Qazaq steppe in Russian early modern cartography. Using the concept of a cartographic pattern, the author shows the predominance of generalized and simple ways of transmitting information. The purpose of this situation is the fact that the very knowledge of the Qazaq steppe was a subject of peripheral interest in Russian politics and culture of the period. Also standard Russian map makers were far from understanding how the cultural landscape of nomadic peoples could be displayed. The maps in question are not only a tool that forms and transmits a certain perception of space - it is, in a completely modern spirit, a tool for transforming space, turning it from a permeable and difficult to control into a barrier, regulated by the efforts of the army and bureaucracy. On these maps, we see «zero images» (nulevye obrazy) or «lacuna images» (obrazy-lakuny) of the images of the Qazaq steppe, these parts of the cartographic materials are left empty. On the overview Siberian general map of 1765, the space on the other side of the border lines is signed: «The steppe of the nomadic Kirgis-Kaisaks» (Step’ kochujushhih Kirgis-Kajsakov). This is not a refusal to transmit information at all, and not a too burdensome way to mark on maps a significant territory, about the structure of which and life within which Russian cartographers seem to know little. It is likely that this is one of the most common perceptions of the Qazaq steppe in Russian cartography of the 18^th  – first half of the 19^th century.